FINAL Miss Canadiana

And the Winner Is… Essay on Miss Canadiana by Michelle Jacques “…I feel like she’s another person. She’s not cynical and jaded like I am.” On July 1, 2002–Canada Day–Camille Turner crowned herself Miss Canadiana. As part of the fiction that she has created, there were other contestants, but they never posed any real threat. Turner is Miss Canadiana. She may have had to reach deep into her psyche to find that more optimistic, innocent part of herself, but with a tiara and floor length red gown, and over-the-top Canadian memorabilia to sustain her, she’s spent the past eight years making appearances at events across the country and around the world–sometimes invited, sometimes not–representing her country with the grace and goodwill befitting a real beauty queen. “No matter how long I live in this country, I will never be thought of as Canadian.” The idea for the performance came to Turner in a shopping mall in North Bay. Having stopped there for supplies for a camping trip in northern Ontario, she was surprised by the attention her presence elicited from the other shoppers. People were staring at her. She wasn’t dressed oddly; she wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. Canada defines itself as a multicultural Mecca, and yet, Turner who had come to Canada from Jamaica as a child, was being treated as though she didn’t belong; as though she was “some sort of alien”–which is how she describes how she was made to feel in this and other situations like it. Multiculturalism was adopted as official policy in Canada in 1971, and now has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Turner was feeling the failure of Canadian multiculturalism–more than seventy-five years after the Governor General of Canada, The Lord Tweedsmuir, said “the strongest nations are those that are made up of different racial elements.” “If I walk down the street, it’s different than when she walks down the street.” After her experience in the North Bay shopping mall, the idea for Miss Canadiana came to Turner in a flash. The beauty queen that first set out with a paper sash and dollar store tiara has now appeared at events and in exhibitions across the country, and around the world. Early iterations of Miss Canadiana saw her giving away Canadian flags and maple leaf cookies in public interventions on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and as part of Free Manifesta, a project that artist Sal Randolph developed for Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2002. Since then, she has been featured in exhibitions in venues in Mexico, throughout Canada, and most recently, at the Havana Biennial, Cuba, in a series of performances that cumulatively comprise Turner’s Red, White and Beautiful Tour. Miss Canadiana has also made appearances at many of the symposia, residencies, workshops, and panel discussions in which Turner is invited to participate–and these have taken place in locales as far reaching as: Broken Hill, Australia; Dakar, Senegal; Göttelborn, Germany; and, North Preston, Nova Scotia. She has become the consummate symbol of the country that would not let her in. “Whenever I go places, people ask to take my photo. People have asked me for my autograph. It’s like being larger than life...identity is something you construct and you put on.” Whether she is an official invitee or an unexpected guest, Miss Canadiana is greeted with a certain awe and veneration. The admiration is well deserved, for she is as congenial and lovely as any beauty queen. Adorned from head to toe in patriotic red and white, distributing Canadian memorabilia, or presiding over a tea party, there is little in Turner’s demeanor to suggest that she is not authentic. She graciously poses for photographs, embraces her fans, and answers their questions. She has amassed admirers around the world, who send their messages of support to Miss Canadiana’s website. “I saw you on TV and wanted to say congratulations! You are a great representative of Canada and Canadians! You are so obviously proud of who you are, of being Canadian, and of winning the Miss Canadiana contest!” “Keep up the good job and do not get discouraged, I am so glad that you are Canadian.” “You are a beautiful woman with lovely grace. You must be inspiring to so many people.” “I just saw a… documentary called Race Is a Four Letter Word, in which you appeared. I want to thank you so much for your wonderful project, and for representing Canada with so much beauty, and intelligence, and sensitivity, and humour.” “I don’t have to explain anything. People just see the symbols and automatically assume this is who you are.” Some viewers are aware that Miss Canadiana is art. Others are not. If directly questioned about this, Turner will respond truthfully. She is often invited to speak to groups about her project, and in these contexts, she will engage in discussion about what she is trying to achieve by playing this role. But people don’t tend to question the veracity of her crown; they don’t generally ask whether Miss Canadiana is a real contest, so Turner remains in character. The crux of Turner’s performance lies in the responses of her audience, which range from fascination with her fame and celebrity, to more pointed questions that make evident their wonder that Canada has a black beauty queen. Turner engages with all of these reactions, expanding the forum that she has created with Miss Canadiana. It is perhaps ironic that the place from which Turner examines Canada’s failures to be multicultural and inclusive is one that, on the surface, seems to celebrate it. On one level, there is a certain amount of artifice involved in Turner’s venture; on another, even in situations where the truth of the matter is revealed, it never comes off as duplicitous or ill-intentioned. With a great deal of wit and goodwill, Miss Canadiana provides a framework for a discussion and celebration of what Canada could and should be, if, as the Lord Tweedsmuir recommended so many years ago, its cultural groups were to “retain their individuality and each make its contribution to the national character.” “For me, I see the whole beauty queen icon as being kind of a blank slate that people project their desires on.” Interestingly, it is the “Canadiana” portion of Turner’s performance that has drawn the most critical analysis. Perhaps it is because she is so believable as a beauty queen that the “Miss” is generally overlooked. Miss Canadiana uncovers our assumptions about what it means to be Canadian, and what it means to be beautiful. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen: Black Women, Beauty and the Politics of Race is sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig’s analysis of how personal appearance has been used by black women to negotiate the complexities of race, class, and politics in America. She traces the history of African-American beauty contests back to 1891 that consider all of their ambiguities such as the privileging of middle-class, light-skinned, black women, and the emphasis on race politics at the exclusion of gender and class politics. Craig points out the importance of these pageants in establishing positive representations of black women in a nation where most of the images of African-Americans were being propagated by the racist South. While our post-colonial and post-feminist sensibilities tell us to eschew women judged against one another based primarily on their physical attributes regardless of colour, Craig argues that beauty contests were important weapons in the defense against predominating ideas and images of black inferiority. In September, 1968, while a group of women identifying themselves as members of the Women’s Liberation protested the Miss America competition in front of the Atlantic City Convention Center, just a few blocks away, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was mounting the first Miss Black America pageant in what it referred to as a “‘positive protest’ against the exclusion of black women from the Miss America title.” While the NAACP typically fought racism by mounting legal challenges to the systems of racial segregation, they could not use this strategy in the case of the Miss America contest. African-American girls were allowed to compete–they just never won. “[My] cultural identity has been defined through the guise of ‘multiculturalism,’ as a fetishized display of ‘diversity’ rather than an integral part of the fabric of Canadian culture.” Turner enters this narrative from a Canadian point of view–one that intersects with this analysis of African-American beauty contests–but is set in a country where the intersection of beauty, race, and competition is made murky by a national narrative that, at least in theory, advocates diversity. The act of creating Miss Canadiana out of the feelings of alienation that were stirred by that experience in the North Bay shopping mall is akin to the African- American examples of using beauty culture to counter mainstream representations. Turner complicates her project by making it about beauty and nationhood: while the Miss Black America contest was censured because it privileged civil rights over women’s rights, Turner’s performance is a critique of both gender and race as they intersect with nationality. Canadian women have been competing in international competitions since 1947. The decisions about whom to send to international competitions were made first through various local competitions, then through various national events. Of these, the best known was the Miss Canada pageant, first begun as a scholarship competition in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1946, and later televised from 1963 through 1992.

Load more